JAPANESE PEACE TREATY

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26513, 30 August 1951, Page 7

JAPANESE PEACE TREATY

Soviet Proposals For Conference (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, August 28. The Soviet proposals for the Japanese Peace Treaty are expected to be based on three principles, according to James Reston, diplomatic correspondent of the “New York Times.” * The first 18 that the treaty should be signed not by some nations, but by all the nations which took part in the war against Japan. The Soviet’s second proposal is that the treaty should be worked out on the basis of the Cairo, Potsdam, and Yalta Declarations. The first, in the Soviet view, promised the return of Formosa and the Pescadores Islands to the Chinese Communists, the Potsdam Declaration suggested that peace treaties should first be drafted by the Council of Foreign Ministers—thus giving the Soviet and other nations a veto—and the Yalta Agreement promised the southern Sakhalin and Kurile Islands to Russia.

The third proposal was that a conference of those nations which participated in the war against Japan should be called to consider all available treaty drafts. Reston said that the last point would open up the whole question of the treaty’s substance. This was precisely what the United States was determined to prevent.

In a surprise switch of plans, the Russian delegation arranged to-day to arrive by train in San Francisco three days before the start of the conference. Previously the delegation was reported to be planning on reaching San Francisco on the day before the meeting. The switch in plans increased suspicion among American officials that the Russians intended to spend their pre-conference time in an intensive campaign to round up foreign support for Moscow's expected opposition to the treaty. Mr Andrej Gromyko, the Soviet Deputy-Foreign Minister, who arrived in New York yesterday, apparently plans to go direct to San Francisco without stopping in Washington to make the customary courtesy call on President Truman and the Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson).